Illinois Gun Permits Break Records Amid Pandemic, Civil Unrest

Eric DeGrechie
Updated ·4 min read

ILLINOIS — Demand for firearms permits and interest in purchasing guns are higher than they have ever been, Illinois State Police said this week.

In 1968, a law was passed that requires state residents who wish to legally have or buy ammunition in Illinois to acquire a Firearms Owners Identification card, or FOID. Since that time, the Illinois State Police Firearms Services Bureau (FSB) has been tasked with administering FOID cards, concealed carry licenses, the Firearms Transfer Inquiry Program (FTIPS), gun dealer licensing, appeals, background correlations, investigative support, enforcement and customer service for the firearms safety laws of Illinois.

And with the demand for guns at an all-time high, there's also a large backlog in the FSB for all related services. Among the findings released by state police Wednesday:

  • The number of FOID cardholders has grown from 1.2 million to 2.2 million in a decade.

  • Concealed carry license (CCL) holder numbers grew from 90,301 in 2014 to 343,299 in 2020.

According to a release from ISP, the Firearms Services Fund was "swept" in 2015 and 2018 due to a lengthy budget impasse. As a result, no plan to maintain or expand staffing was developed during that period. The current administration has not swept the fund and, in 2019, new leadership over FSB initiated a hiring plan and metrics-based strategic plan focused on outcomes and accountability.

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What no one could have predicted was that in 2020, the coronavirus pandemic and civil unrest led to an unprecedented demand for guns and the services the FSB provides, according to police.

A look at the numbers paints a picture showing the increased demand:

  • FOID card applications increased 167 percent from 166,649 in 2017 to 445,945 as of November 2020, blowing past the small surge in 2013 when CCL was enacted.

  • Firearms Transfer Inquiry Program (FTIP) inquiries increased 45 percent from 2019 reaching 506,104 so far in 2020.

  • FSB processed an unprecedented 64,000-plus FTIPs in March 2020 — the largest number recorded for one month until that record was broken in June with 65,000-plus FTIPs.

  • FSB has processed more than 67,000 incoming records in 2020.

  • More than 400,000 calls came into the FSB call center from May to November, when a new automated phone system with metrics was activated.

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"Our people believe in building a system that makes it hard for the bad guys and simple and safe for the good guys," ISP Director Brendan Kelly said in the release. "The Illinois State Police will keep pushing hard, but frankly we will need authority from the Legislature to untangle, streamline and integrate the aging patchwork of FOID, concealed carry, firearms transactions, and records checks if we are going to fulfill this mission."

With staffing increases, elimination of internal redundancies and execution of technology upgrades, some metrics are slowly but steadily improving, according to the state police. This progress has been achieved by:

  • Hiring 21 firearms eligibility analysts since March 2020, with 11 additional analysts planned to start in January 2021.

  • Dedicating 19 temporary contractual employees to ISP FSB.

  • Temporarily assigning seven sworn personnel to ISP FSB.

  • Implementing seven of 14 major "Lean Six Sigma" changes to the process.

  • The adoption of recommendations in FOID processing resulted in a 33 percent improvement in productivity in individual background processing.

  • The implementation of the call center VoIP system implementation in April 2020; nearly 100,000 calls have been handled through the system's self-service capabilities.

  • Cleared approximately 67,000 correlations in CY20.

  • Holding down processing times averaging well below the 72-hour waiting period, even with a 45 percent increase in FTIP transactions from CY19 to CY20.

  • Processing 216,805 FOID applications this year.

  • Processing 50,557 CCLs this year.

  • FSB staff working approximately 17,000 hours of overtime.

  • Processing more new applications than those received in October and November. This is the first time this has happened in CY20, according to the ISP. More than 24,000 applications were processed in November alone.

'Unacceptable' processing times

The average time for processing a FOID application is 121 days, and the average time for a CCL is 145 days, according to police. The ISP has stated that these outcomes are "unacceptable" but admits that staffing, internal modifications and technology alone will not resolve the issue.

According to the Illinois State Police, conclusions presented to the Restore Illinois Commission in October "showed the varied firearms safety processes that have evolved inconsistently" over 60 years, and they "must be integrated into a modern firearms safety structure that efficiently screens applicants and prioritizes safety." Police said they need the support of the General Assembly for this to get accomplished.

This article originally appeared on the Across Illinois Patch